“Our enemies are innovative and resourceful, and so are we. They never stop thinking about new ways to harm our country and our people, and neither do we.” - George W. Bush

Friday, March 22, 2013

Reason marks our humanity, suggesting a portion of the soul capable of a priori recognition of truth. With this in mind the modern individual in the mass has been rendered at least partially soulless through her everyday deferral to the powerfully persuasive notion and representation of expertise.

False Flags, Fake Media Reporting, Deceiving the Public: Social Engineering and the 21st Century “Truth Emergency”

On March 9, 1995 Edward Bernays died at the age of 103. His professional endeavors involved seeking to change popular attitudes and behavior by fundamentally altering social reality.[1] Since he laid the modern groundwork for deceiving the public we are for better or worse living out his legacy today.

Several years ago Project Censored directors Peter Phillips and Mickey Huff identified and explained the “truth emergency” that is among the greatest threats to civil society and human existence. This crisis is manifest in flawed (or non-existent) investigations into 9/11 and other potential false flag events, fraudulent elections, and illegal wars vis-à-vis a corporate-controlled news media that fail to adequately inform the public on such matters. While neglecting or obscuring inquiry into such events and phenomena major media disparage independent and often uncredentialed researchers as “conspiracy theorists” or, more revealingly, “truthers.”[2]

The truth emergency continues today, and social engineers like Bernays long understood the significance of undermining the use of reason, for it is only through reason that truth may be determined and evaluated. To be sure, individuals and institutions that have successfully achieved legitimacy in the public mind are recognized as having a monopoly on the capacity to reason and are thus perceived as the foremost bearers of truth and knowledge. Through the endorsement of “experts”—figures perceived as authoritative in their field—the public could easily be persuaded on anything from tobacco use and water fluoridation to military intervention abroad.

Today reason is defined one dimensionally; its relationship to truth largely taken-for-granted. Yet as Leibniz observed, reason marks our humanity, suggesting a portion of the soul capable of a priori recognition of truth. With this in mind the modern individual in the mass has been rendered at least partially soulless through her everyday deferral to the powerfully persuasive notion and representation of expertise. However narrowly focused, under the guise of objectivity the institutionally-affiliated journalist, academic, bureaucrat, and corporate spokesperson have become the portals of reason through which the public is summoned to observe “truth.”

These agents of reason are largely bereft of emotion, moderate in temperament, and speak or write in an unsurprisingly formulaic tone. The narratives they relate and play out present tragedy with the expectation of certain closure. And with a century of commercial media programming the mass mind has come to not only accept but anticipate such regulation and control under the regime of institutionally-sanctioned expertise.

The selection and arrangement of experts by corporate media guarantees a continued monopoly on “truth,” particularly when presented to an uninquisitive and politically dormant public. Yet this phenomenon extends to ostensibly more trustworthy media outlets such as public broadcasting, where a heightened utilization of credentialed expertise is required to ensure the consensus of those who perceive themselves as more refined than the Average Joe.

This preservation of what passes for reason and truth cannot be sustained without a frequent dialectical struggle with unreason and falsity. Since many individuals have unconsciously placed their genuine reasoning faculties in abeyance and often lack a valid knowledge of politics and history, their unspoken faith in government and the broader political economy to protect and further their interests is groundless. Against this milieu those genuinely capable of utilizing their reasoning capacities in the pursuit of truth are often held up as heretical for their failure to accept what is presented as reality, with the requisite “conspiracy theory” label wielded in Orwellian fashion to denote such abnormal intellectual activity.

Lacking the autonomous use of reason to recognize truth, form often trumps substance. For example, a seemingly obscure news website with unconventional graphics or an emotional news presenter purporting to discuss the day’s affairs is typically perceived as untrustworthy and illegitimate by a public conditioned to accept forms of news and information where objectivity and professionalism often camouflage disinformation.

In 2013 the truth emergency is greater than ever, and in the era of seemingly never-ending pseudo-events and Potemkin villages presented by major media as the reality with which we must contend, the application of independent reason in pursuit of truth has all too frequently been replaced with an unthinking obeisance toward the smokescreen of expertise disguising corporate power and control.

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Russia's world-renowned Bolshoi Ballet has been thrown into the depths of scandal in recent months with stories of brutal acid attacks and death threats against dancers.

The controversy isn't over yet.

In a fresh twist, a former dancer has told the press that dancers in the Bolshoi were forced to sleep with wealthy patrons, and said that the current General Manager of the company turned it into a "giant brothel."

According to the BBC, Anastasia Volochkova first made the accusations against the Bolshoi's current General Manager, Anatoly Iksanov, on Sunday.

“Girls are invited each in turn by the administrator, who explains that they are going to a party, with dinner and a follow-up, in bed and going all the way,” Volochkova said during a show on state-owned NTV’s March 17 program, Bloomberg reports. When asked with whom they were forced to sleep with, Volochkova said, “With certain oligarchs, some of them are members of the board of trustees (of the Bolshoi) or just the person organizing the party.”

Volochkova later repeated the accusations in a radio interview.

Iksanov has responded to Volochkova's accusations, dismissing them as “nonsense and dirt.”

The former ballerina may well have an axe to grind. Volochkova was fired from the theatre in 2003, reportedly for being "too fat." She won a legal case against the theatre, and became a prominent TV personality in Russia.

However, the accusations help bolster the reputation of the 237-year-old company as a place of bloody backstabbing and poisoned intrigue; a reputation brought to the forefront in January, when current artistic director Sergei Filin had acid thrown on his face in an attack apparently orchestrated by a dancer.

Last year, Gennady Yanin, a deputy director at the Bolshoi, was forced to quit after images of him engaging in sexual acts with other men were anonymously leaked to the Internet.

The average American cashier makes $20,230 a year, which in a single-earner household would leave a family of four living under the poverty line.

But if he works the cash registers at QuikTrip, it’s an entirely different story.

The convenience store and gas station chain offers entry-level employees an annual salary of around $40,000, plus benefits.

Those high wages didn’t stop QuikTrip from prospering in a hostile economic climate. While other low-cost retailers spent the recession laying off staff and shuttering stores, QuikTrip expanded to its current 645 locations across 11 states.

Many employers believe that one of the best ways to raise their profit margin is to cut labor costs. But companies like QuikTrip, the grocery store chain Trader Joe’s, and Costco Wholesale are proving that the decision to offer low wages is a choice, not an economic necessity. All three are low-cost retailers, a sector that is traditionally known for relying on part-time, low-paid employees. Yet these companies have all found that the act of valuing workers can pay off in the form of increased sales and productivity.

SACRAMENTO — After six years of waiting on the sidelines, newly eager home buyers across the country are discovering that there are not enough houses for sale to accommodate the recent flush of demand.

“In my 27 years I’ve never seen inventories this low,” said Kurt K. Colgan, a broker with Lyon Real Estate in the Sacramento metropolitan area, where the share of homes on the market has plummeted by one of the largest amounts in the nation. “I’ve also never seen a market turn so quickly.”

The housing turnaround seems to have caught almost everyone in the business by surprise. As desirable as the long-awaited improvement may be, the unusually low level of homes for sale is creating widespread problems for buyers and sellers alike, leading to bidding wars and bubblelike price jumps in places that not long ago were suffering from major declines. In the Sacramento area, where the housing bust took an especially heavy toll, the median sales price has surged 15 percent over the last year, according to Zillow.

Nationwide, sales prices rose 7.3 percent over the course of 2012, according to the Standard & Poor’s Case-Shiller index, ranging from a slight decline in New York to a surge of 23 percent in Phoenix. Tracking more closely with the national trend were cities like Dallas, up 6.5 percent; Tampa, which rose 7.2 percent; and Denver, which gained 8.5 percent.

In many areas, builders are scrambling to ramp up production but face delays because of the difficulty of finding construction workers and in obtaining permits from suddenly overwhelmed local authorities. At the same time, homeowners — many of them lifted above water for the first time in years — often remain reluctant to sell, either because they want to wait and see how much further prices will climb or because they are afraid of being displaced in the sudden buying frenzy.

“You see a home go for sale and within a couple days there are three, four, six offers,” said Carrie Miskawi, a mother of three young children who has been looking for a new home for the last six months with Mr. Colgan’s help. She and her husband have decided not to put their current home on the market because they fear it will be snatched up before they have a chance to bid successfully on a new one.

“I approve.” With the discovery of those two words that Jamie Dimon, the chairman and C.E.O. of JPMorgan Chase, wrote in an email on January 23, 2012, the most prominent banker on Wall Street has been directly tied to the burgeoning “London Whale” trading scandal, which has returned to the headlines in sensational fashion. In a hearing in Washington Friday, the scandal took another twist, with a senior government official asserting that, in the months leading up to the bank losing billions of dollars, Dimon ordered his underlings not to give the bank’s regulators information they had requested.

The escalation in the scandal started with Thursday’s publication of a three-hundred page report by a Senate subcommittee, which said Dimon not only signed off on a strategy that understated the risks being taken by the bank’s traders, including Bruno Iksil, a derivatives trader known as the Whale, who worked out of the bank’s tower at Canary Wharf in east London. After Iksil’s losses were revealed, last April, the report said, Dimon misled investors and the public about their nature.

You fellas are funnier with each passing day.Deuce does his redesign, and for a couple of weeks things run smoothly.

Doug is chastised a time or two, taking the changes in stride.

boobie ends his hiatus, returning the threads to racist innuendo, anti-American propaganda, inane ramblings of a pseudo intellectual in regards to subjects he knows nothing about and a note to his son about a trip they will never take.

Instead of the Librarian cleaning up after boobie, maintaining the newly posted standard for content, the droppings are left in the stacks.

Who controls the past controls the future. Who controls the present controls the past. -- O'Brien in 1984

Every government is run by liars and nothing they say should be believed. -- I. F. Stone

http://www.ihr.org/jhr/v06/v06p--9_Bennett.html

This paper by John Bennet was the first one I came across when I googled Orwell, 1984, and propaganda. It is long and somewhat dated in that it doesn't take account of recent examples in Western countries; however, it does make several good points about revisionist history.

Today, more information produced out of Washington is designated classified than is freely dispersed. We saw a perfect example of attempts to revise history under Bush when the government began reclassifying information that had been in the public domain for over three decades as secret. It permeates every aspect of our lives, government (Obama's undisclosed drone policy), business (Jamie Dimon, rock star), MSM (lack of questions or coverage of policy decision), the media (revisionist history ala Zero-Down-Thirty), etc.

If I were to start writing on this subject I would be here for a week.

In Canada, quite a while back, they passed a "Freedom of information" act. I once golfed with a guy who worked for the government handling freedom of information requested. He laughed and called it the "Freedom from information" act. It set up a formal process for folk (citizens, reporters, ect.) to request information from the government. It also set up a bureaucracy to vet the information released - hence the freedom FROM information result.

Democrats controlling the Senate appear on track to pass their first budget in four years, promising a second, almost $1 trillion round of tax increases on top of more than $600 billion in higher taxes on the wealthy enacted in January.

The nonbinding but politically symbolic measure would protect safety-net programs for the poor and popular domestic priorities like education, health research and federal law enforcement agencies from cuts sought by House Republicans, who adopted a far more austere plan on Thursday morning.

The Democratic plan caters to party stalwarts on the liberal edge of the spectrum just as the House GOP measure was crafted to appeal to more recent tea party arrivals. The $1 trillion in new revenue would accrue over the coming decade and would be coupled with a net $875 billion in spending cuts, generated by modest cuts to federal health care programs, domestic agencies and the Pentagon and reduced government borrowing costs.

The GOP budget proposal, similar to previous plans offered by Budget Committee Chairman Paul Ryan, R-Wis., demonstrates that it's possible, at least mathematically, to balance the budget within a decade without raising taxes. But to do so Ryan, his party's vice presidential nominee last year, assumes deep cuts that would force millions from programs for the poor like food stamps and Medicaid and cut almost 20 percent from domestic agency budget levels assumed less than two years ago...

From The Detroit News: http://www.detroitnews.com/article/20130322/POLITICS03/303220403#ixzz2OHVJwsLX

They just proposed this years budget in Canada. The gov is still insisting they can balance the budget and get rid of the deficit by 2015. Others are not so sure. Seems the deficit is about 20 billion a year. When comparing to the US a factor of 10 is often used as a ballpark multiplier. That would equate to a US federal deficit of 200 billion a year. Seems there is a difference.

The Rev. Jesse Jackson called for a mass, nonviolent protest in Detroit against the new emergency financial manager at a rally this morning at city hall.

The activists alongside Jackson pledged to file a lawsuit next week challenging the constitutionality of Michigan's new emergency manager law, which takes effect Thursday and grants broad powers to the incoming EFM, Kevyn Orr.

Jackson, who was joined by Detroit Councilwoman JoAnn Watson and Congressman John Conyers, also called on the U.S. Department of Justice to intervene to protect Detroiters' right to vote.

That's what one of his handlers, John Griffiths, declares in response to an "indictment" that the Butler County, Ohio, prosecutor issued Thursday against Pennsylvania's famous weather-predicting groundhog...

"Think about this: have you ever been enchanted by a person you didn't like? You cannot influence people unless they actually find you likeable. When I first met Richard Branson, he asked me if I flew on Virgin. When I told him that I didn't , he got on his knees and started to polish my shoes with his jacket. That's likability. And now whenever I can, I fly Virgin Airways."

When I say to my wife, dear, it is unreasonable for you to expect me to pick up my socks and underwear so early in the morning, it usually doesn't work though.

Getting back to the Jews, the Arabs, Hamas, etc both sides are relying on 'revelation' in a way. I think there is much more reason on the Jewish side, (particularly thinking of their industry) and thinking it was unreasonable for Arafat to turn down that Jewish offer. He may have had a good reason to turn it down though, thinking my income is at stake here. Who knows what the Arafat side was thinking. I think he was Egyptian, wasn't he? I guess after 1400 years of it, they didn't really want to live in peace with the Jews, but rather rely on their revelation, which tells them to kill the Jews.

Didn't know that. Knew she was in Santa Cruz. Fine rich wonderful place for the retired.

He must be dead now, Marcuse. She, probably living well on retirement from UC Santa Cruz, retirement funded by the taxpayers of that state. Bill Ayers is a hot shot at the university in Chicago, living well, still guilty, though not convicted, of killing those police. I think he was born rich, though. An odd man, born rich, spouting off about killing the system that allowed him wealth, killing police, writing for Obama, whom they both claim didn't really know one another, and is another big lie, and now, still rich. I'd bet that Romney has done more for and given more money to the deserving poor than all of them put together.

Of course, reason is defined by the various biases each brings to the discussion.

In addition, from my point of view, when you you imply that Hannity, Bolton, or King are exhibiting sound judgement or good sense then likely an ironic sense of humor also has to factor into the definition.

It was a good discussion of this group, coming to grips with a situation that is only getting worse by the week.

I think your outlook on this topic exercises neither sound judgement nor good sense. I think it is reckless and unhistorical.

That must make us both unreasonable. Each in the others eyes.

They also spoke of what a miserable and untrustworthy head of government we have right now, how opportunities were wasted, particularly in not even giving verbal support of some kind to the uprising in Iran. And how the entire other area, Egypt, Libya, Syria, is going MB. And how foolish it is to continue aid to Egypt, even to the point of tanks and jets, when the old military people have been removed. Some even saw a pattern here. I think these opinions exercised sound judgement and good sense, based on the past behavior of the actors, individuals and groups.

A clip of Obama speaking before a mural of Arafat was displayed.

It was made clear time is really running out, and Israel will probably act, without us. It was heartening that some of the opinions on the prospects of this were more positive than I might have thought.

I think we as a nation are asleep and bad times are coming. I do not think you are exercising reason.

And no, there is no humor in my outlook. It is very serious, humorless, and fateful.

I continue to hear how bad things are getting, Syria, Iran, Egypt. What I don't hear are your solutions.

You say Israel will probably act. Well, that is up to Israel, isn't it?

But tell me what did these gentlemen, the same that have beeen stirring the pot for war over the last decade, propose that the US do? For that matter, what do you propose we do? You continue to piss and moan that things are getting worse by the week. What is your solution? And don't tell me we need to support Israel. What exactly do you mean by that?

You say we disagree. You call me unreasonable so presumably you know my position. Tell me yours. Get specific. Syria, Iran, Egypt, what is your plan for each?

Iran We should give Israel the heavy bombs they need to help do the job. They need our bigger bombs, I think. We should not cut them off on materials. They are dependent still on some of our parts, I believe. We should plan with them on how best to take out the furthest sites, which may be out of their range. We should act to see if an agreement might be made with Saudi Arabia to use bases there, or other places. Kuwait. There are our cruise missiles from ships. We might even 'lend' them some of our best bombers. We should not put in ground troops unless it is some kind of special ops deal. If we have to take part in an air attack then we should do so. It might not be necessary for us to do so.

We should not leave Netanyahu sitting in the White House on a visit.

Whether we should try to attack, or help attack, the Iranian government itself, I don't know.

Syria Since I don't know, ask them, the Israelis and the Europeans too. I don't know whose side we should take, or even if we should take a side, though we are taking a side now. Our main purpose should be to control chemical weapons if we can. An intervention would save lives in the long run but it is really not our business. No fly zones?

Egypt Too late to do anything. Don't give them any more weapons, tanks and F-16s. Don't give any more money.

Main objective - keep chemical, biological and nuclear weapons out of the hands of the MB and the Iranians and the others of similar bent but with different names. Demilitarize. A man without a gun can't use bullets, a terrorist group without nukes can't ruin the city.

Other than in your first paragraph, you are basically suggesting we do everything we are doing now but say, like Obama, "all options are on the table." You toy with the "if we should need to's..." without coming right out and saying there are only two options: we do what we are doing now or we go to war with Iran, but you don't have the balls to come right and say we should do the second.

Oh, there is the "we should give Israel our state-of-the-art equipment, bombs, our most advanced planes, basically out-Pollarding Pollard. But then, what else could be expected from you.

In the rest of it, you are merely dithering and pissing into the wind.

Demilitarize? Good lord. There is a UN resolution right now calling for an arms embargo in Syria. Despite the embargo, do you know how many countries are supplying arms there right now including us?

Get real.

Your suggestions

Surely, you already know my positions, otherwise, it would have been unreasonable for you to indicate they were unreasonable as you did above.

You, like those jinoistic dicks you mentioned above, don't have the balls to come right out and say we should declare war on Iran because you know the US public wouldn;t support another ME war were we gain nothing and lose much.

'Surely, you already know my positions, otherwise, it would have been unreasonable for you to indicate they were unreasonable as you did above.'

heh

Well, Quirk, I must have intuited that since your positions were different from mine, they must be unreasonable, as in calling everyone else a dick, and suggesting nothing at all. Which, as far as I can reasonably see, is your position. I haven't read anything else from you.

But it is interesting that you use the plural of position. What does this mean? Are there some nuances between sitting on your ass in Detroit and calling everyone else a dick, and sitting on your ass in Detroit and calling everyone else a dick, that I am missing?

The use of demilitarize is with reference to getting rid of weapons of mass destruction.

The use of the helpful euphemism rather than coming out and saying what you meant, why should I have expected more.

What does this mean?

It means I have no problem with continuing the current sanctions regime with Iran; although, if they are intent on getting the bomb they will surely get it whether we want them to or not (and regardless of what agressive action we take).

It means I am completely against the war option you propose. Based on history and common sense, jumping into a war with Iran is just plain dumb.

Over the past three decades, we have seen that our intelligence capibilites have proved wanting, that our diplomatic efforts have made things worse, that when we do go to war we gain nothing while hemorraging both lives and treasure, and in the end all we really do is generate more enemies by the carnage we leave in our wake. From a political standpoint, the last three administrations have been a disaster. Yet, you want to jump in and follow the wisdom of those who got us into Iraq and who still clammer for us to stay in Afghanistan.

I would call that unreasonable. Einstein, through his definition, would call it insane.

Even, the conservatives and the GOP are turning against your interventionist wet dreams, leaving you in the company of nitwits like Hannity, King, Bolton, Graham and McCain, the troglodytes of chaos.

In their 2016 presidential straw poll, CPAC chose Rand Paul. Graham and MCain didn't even show. It could be the fact that Graham failed to see the irony in the following quote he gave while speaking there.

"I’ve never seen our friends more afraid or our enemies more emboldened," the South Carolina senator said.

He certainly got that right. Ten years of American intervention has made a complete mess of the Mideast. That’s obvious to any thinking person. Unfortunately, Graham does not fit into that category. He meant that as an argument for even more intervention.

If I have ever had a wet dream it is so long ago, say fifty years, that I cannot remember it, and I am searching my memory.

Not a reasonable statement.

And no, I don't clammer to stay in Afghanistan. I have expressed concern about what is to happen to the women there. And others too. As to Iraq, once we went in, I finally came to the conclusion we might want to make three states out of it, like Joe Biden, That is about all I have said. I believe I may have said we may have attacked the wrong country, but can't recall for sure. We seem to be on the same page on Vietnam.

Obama made some statements today that do seem to indicate he won't cut Israel off at the knees if they go after Iranian weapons programs, but who knows. One day he is for something, the next against it.

I have noticed that these new young ladies on Fox, who are very good looking, well groomed and intelligent and very well spoken,, nearly always have their left legs over their right. I am wondering if this is something about an advantageous camera angle.

Magnificent Ronald and the Founding Fathers of al Qaeda

“These gentlemen are the moral equivalents of America’s founding fathers.” — Ronald Reagan while introducing the Mujahideen leaders to media on the White house lawns (1985). During Reagan’s 8 years in power, the CIA secretly sent billions of dollars of military aid to the mujahedeen in Afghanistan in a US-supported jihad against the Soviet Union. We repeated the insanity with ISIS against Syria.